The Shanghai Stock Exchange launched detailed benchmarks for guiding real estate developers' bond issuance. The detailed regulations will impact smaller developers because they are less likely to be qualified to issue bonds under the new rules.

As of Wednesday, A-share listed developers have issued 217 bonds year-to-date raising a combined value of 282.4 billion yuan ($42.3 billion).

A circular from SSE on Tuesday said that, in order to issue bonds, a real estate developer must fall into one of four categories: (1) listed in China or an overseas stock market, (2) a central government owned enterprise with realty development as core business, (3) a developer owned by a the government of a province or a province's capital city or a city of same level, and (4) one of the top 100 privately owned developers.